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164/365: Perry Barr Greyhound Stadium, Birmingham
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I couldn't resist that subject line! What you see here is the very last weeks of Perry Barr Stadium in Birmingham, mostly known as a greyhound track. I have little time for greyhound racing, and I suspect the decision to amalgamate both this and Monmore Green in Wolverhampton on a new site at Dunstall Park (already a horse racing track) elsewhere in Wolverhampton only puts off the inevitable for a few years. The sport is in steep and probably irreversible decline and the days when the Greyhound Derby at White City, London attracted 92,000 fans, and the sport was beaten only by football for total attendances in some years, are long past. As I say, I'm not keen on greyhound racing itself. I'm more saddened by the fact that the Birmingham Brummies, the speedway team who race here, will go out of business altogether when the stadium is closed next month to be redeveloped for housing.
Greyhound racing is on its way out for several reasons. First among them is concern for animal welfare, more so than with horse racing. The sport is also almost totally dependent these days on internet betting, which means both tiny crowds (in the hundreds) and a nearly impossible task in attracting new blood in the shape of families. The format of greyhound racing means short races with long gaps, and there's far less peripheral entertainment (food, bouncy castles, etc) than at horse racing courses. Regardless of the Dunstall Green move, even without England following Wales' imminent ban¹ I suspect greyhound racing will effectively die in Britain in the next decade. Most people, including me, are unlikely to mourn it -- but the stadium is a part of Birmingham's sporting and social history, so I thought it worth documenting before it disappears entirely.
¹ This is largely symbolic, as only one Welsh track remains anyway.
I was mostly in Perry Barr for boring reasons unconnected with the stadium, but I will note that the suburb is also home to the far more successful Alexander Stadium, the biggest athletics venue in the UK (capacity 18,000) and the host for the athletics competitions in the 2022 Commonwealth Games. The other notable feature is a medium-sized shopping centre, which has fewer closed units than some (though certainly not none) and boasts a quite decent Wetherspoons, the Arthur Robertson. The pub is named after the first member of local athletics club Birchfield Harriers (still in existence) to win an Olympic event, when he took gold in the three-mile run at the 1908 Games in London. The still-continuing bin strike was sadly obvious in the startling amount of litter on the verges, though oddly a few streets away (still in Birmingham) things were a lot less unpleasant. Still, Perry Barr could really do with some proper community-centric redevelopment. We'll see.
164/365: Perry Barr Greyhound Stadium, Birmingham
Click for a larger, sharper image
I couldn't resist that subject line! What you see here is the very last weeks of Perry Barr Stadium in Birmingham, mostly known as a greyhound track. I have little time for greyhound racing, and I suspect the decision to amalgamate both this and Monmore Green in Wolverhampton on a new site at Dunstall Park (already a horse racing track) elsewhere in Wolverhampton only puts off the inevitable for a few years. The sport is in steep and probably irreversible decline and the days when the Greyhound Derby at White City, London attracted 92,000 fans, and the sport was beaten only by football for total attendances in some years, are long past. As I say, I'm not keen on greyhound racing itself. I'm more saddened by the fact that the Birmingham Brummies, the speedway team who race here, will go out of business altogether when the stadium is closed next month to be redeveloped for housing.
Greyhound racing is on its way out for several reasons. First among them is concern for animal welfare, more so than with horse racing. The sport is also almost totally dependent these days on internet betting, which means both tiny crowds (in the hundreds) and a nearly impossible task in attracting new blood in the shape of families. The format of greyhound racing means short races with long gaps, and there's far less peripheral entertainment (food, bouncy castles, etc) than at horse racing courses. Regardless of the Dunstall Green move, even without England following Wales' imminent ban¹ I suspect greyhound racing will effectively die in Britain in the next decade. Most people, including me, are unlikely to mourn it -- but the stadium is a part of Birmingham's sporting and social history, so I thought it worth documenting before it disappears entirely.
¹ This is largely symbolic, as only one Welsh track remains anyway.
I was mostly in Perry Barr for boring reasons unconnected with the stadium, but I will note that the suburb is also home to the far more successful Alexander Stadium, the biggest athletics venue in the UK (capacity 18,000) and the host for the athletics competitions in the 2022 Commonwealth Games. The other notable feature is a medium-sized shopping centre, which has fewer closed units than some (though certainly not none) and boasts a quite decent Wetherspoons, the Arthur Robertson. The pub is named after the first member of local athletics club Birchfield Harriers (still in existence) to win an Olympic event, when he took gold in the three-mile run at the 1908 Games in London. The still-continuing bin strike was sadly obvious in the startling amount of litter on the verges, though oddly a few streets away (still in Birmingham) things were a lot less unpleasant. Still, Perry Barr could really do with some proper community-centric redevelopment. We'll see.
thirsty
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